Trial conversion rate is the central unit-economics metric for a subscription app. The formula: paid first-period conversions ÷ trial starts. A 7-day trial ending in a $9.99 / month charge with 40% conversion is a fundamentally different business than the same trial at 25% — the first-month gross revenue per trial start doubles ($4 vs $2.50), which doubles the effective CPI ceiling you can sustainably bid into paid acquisition.
Industry medians vary wildly by vertical
- Consumer productivity / utilities: 30-50% — most common range. The user is solving a clearly-defined problem and either finds value or doesn't.
- Entertainment / dating: 50-70% — high emotional commitment by trial end, hard to walk away once a routine forms.
- F2P games with subscription tiers: 15-30% — lower because the free experience already delivers most of the value; the sub is an optional power-up.
- AI tools: 25-45% — wide spread depending on how clear the post-trial pricing is and how usage-gated the product is.
Great apps in any vertical land at 60%+ trial-to-paid.
Levers that move trial conversion (ranked by typical impact):
- Post-trial price clarity on the paywall. Apple requires disclosure; the apps that lead with the trial offer AND clearly show the post-trial subscription price convert better than apps that bury the price. Vague disclosure lifts trial starts (because users don't see the commitment) but tanks conversion at the step-up.
- Pre-trial onboarding quality. Users who complete the full onboarding before starting the trial convert 2-3× higher. Time the trial start AFTER a meaningful aha moment, not before.
- In-trial engagement nudges. Push / email around trial end ("your trial ends in 24 hours") typically lifts conversion 5-15%.
- In-trial usage signal. Users active in the last 48 hours of trial convert 3-5× higher than users who haven't opened the app since day 1. Track this; engage the inactive cohort specifically.
Common pitfall: optimizing trial-START rate at the expense of trial-conversion rate. A paywall variant that yields 20% more trial starts but 30% fewer conversions has worse downstream economics, even though the top-of-funnel number looks great. Always measure both rates and let net-revenue-per-paywall-impression be the optimization metric, not start rate alone.